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MC-IOF - International Outgoing Fellowships (IOF)

Objective

The goal of the project is to image supramolecular binding processes on the molecular level with the purpose to gain fundamental understanding of how a sensor operates. This understanding will subsequently be applied as a basis for new sensor design.

Scanning Tunneling Microscopy (STM) will be used to visualize single molecule binding events of analyte molecules to receptor molecules adsorbed at a surface. In addition to topography changes, STM will also give valuable information about changes in electronic properties of the receptor upon the binding. This information will be used in the design of new, extremely sensitive sensors based on carbon nanotubes and graphene. The highly interdisciplinary research will be carried out by a promising young European researcher at MIT (USA) under the supervision of Prof. T. M. Swager, and at the Eindhoven University of Technology (the Netherlands) in the group of Prof. R. A. J. Janssen.